September 16, 2004
The Equal Protection Clause and Individual Rights
American Military University
SS 121, American Government I
by James Landrith
The equal protection clause of the 14h Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1868, has been mentioned often in academic, media and legal circles with regard to many controversial issues. The equal protection clause was designed to prevent government from dividing its citizens into arbitrarily selected groups for the purpose of discriminating against one or more of said groups. It has been used often as a means of limiting the actions of government and also misused to expand government’s reach into the realm of social justice and egalitarian advocacy.
In recent history, the clause has been invoked by supporters of altering state marriage and benefits laws to legalize marriages between same sex partners. The argument for legalization is often based on the unequal treatment of homosexuals versus heterosexuals. By conferring state sanction on one form of adult relationship, with all the legal and tax benefits that go along with such a sanction, that form of relationship is given a significant privilege and status denied to the other relationship. In the meantime, homosexuals wishing to marry are denied the tax benefits and legal rights granted to heterosexual partners, based solely on sexual orientation. This, in my opinion is a clear violation of the equal protection clause. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that government had no authority to deny marriage rights on the basis of race. Without the equal protection clause, my own marriage would probably still be illegal in my home in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Another highly charged topic involving the doctrine of equal protection is the use of affirmative action, racial quotas and contract set-asides as tools to combat the continuing impact of decades of segregation and second class citizenship based on race. The use of such devices by government institutions to attempt to equalize past discrimination is believed by many to be another form of discrimination and has led to two contradictory Supreme Court rulings in 2003.
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